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Truth prevails, and Virtue is triumphant
Phiz
April 1843
Steel-engraving
12.9 cm high by 10.4 cm wide, vignetted
Eighth regular monthly illustration for Charles Dickens's Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, facing page 120 (1844 edition) in the tenth chapter: running head, "Very Important Conversation."
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Nothing could exceed the astonishment of the two Miss Pecksniffs when they found a stranger with their dear papa. Nothing could surpass their mute amazement when he said, "My children, Mr. Chuzzlewit!" But when he told them that Mr. Chuzzlewit and he were friends, and that Mr. Chuzzlewit had said such kind and tender words as pierced his very heart, the two Miss Pecksniffs cried with one accord, "Thank Heaven for this!" and fell upon the old man’s neck. And when they had embraced him with such fervour of affection that no words can describe it, they grouped themselves about his chair, and hung over him, as figuring to themselves no earthly joy like that of ministering to his wants, and crowding into the remainder of his life, the love they would have diffused over their whole existence, from infancy, if he — dear obdurate! — had but consented to receive the precious offering.
"And when I saw you," resumed Mr Pecksniff, with still greater deference, "in the little, unassuming village where we take the liberty of dwelling, I said you were mistaken in me, my dear sir; that was all, I think?"
"No — not all," said Martin, who had been sitting with his hand upon his brow for some time past, and now looked up again; "you said much more, which, added to other circumstances that have come to my knowledge, opened my eyes. You spoke to me, disinterestedly, on behalf of — I needn’t name him. You know whom I mean."
Trouble was expressed in Mr Pecksniff's visage, as he pressed his hot hands together, and replied, with humility, "Quite disinterestedly, sir, I assure you."
"I know it," said old Martin, in his quiet way. "I am sure of it. I said so. It was disinterested, too, in you, to draw that herd of harpies off from me, and be their victim yourself; most other men would have suffered them to display themselves in all their rapacity, and would have striven to rise, by contrast, in my estimation. You felt for me, and drew them off, for which I owe you many thanks. Although I left the place, I know what passed behind my back, you see!"
"You amaze me, sir!" cried Mr Pecksniff; which was true enough.
"My knowledge of your proceedings," said the old man, does not stop at this. You have a new inmate in your house."
"Yes, sir," rejoined the architect, "I have."
"He must quit it," said Martin. [Chapter X, "Containing strange matter; on which many events in this history may, for their good or evil influence, chiefly depend," pp. 120-122 in the 1844 edition]
The novel's first subclimax, the fall of Pecksniff in the tenth plate, is preceded in Part IV by a pair of illustrations centering on the great man in his seemingly most exalted state, making his physical fall all the more degrading. In both "M. Todgers and the Pecksniffs call upon Miss Pinch" (ch. 9) and "Truth prevails and Virtue is triumphant" (ch. 10), Browne captures Pecksniff's impenetrable complacency, and in the second he also makes what is to my eyes a curious external allusion: with his hand inside his waistcoat, Pecksniff strikes a Napoleonic pose. His particular stance here, the shape of his body and head, and the hat on the table, bear a remarkable resemblance to Louis Philippe's pose in a contemporary lithograph of the king and his family (See the illustration in Asa Briggs, p. 51). The posture of self-assumed kingliness may be enough to explain the similarity, but it seems possible that Phiz's basic conception of Pecksniff was influenced by graphic representation of the French king, both in portrait and in caricature. In particular, the famous pear shape of Louis Philippe's head, often caricatured with emphasis on the jowls at the bottom and the hair coming to a point at the top, resembles Pecksniff's head; and the various distortions to which Pecksniff's face is subjected (as in the tenth plate when he cowers in a comer while Pinch restrains Martin) recall Philipon's and Daumier's malicious fun with the Citizen-King's face (Harvey shows a Daumier influence on Browne's Mrs. Gamp — Harvey, pp. 132-34.). Apart from the obviously exaggerated expressions on the three Pecksniffs' faces as they crowd around old Martin, the only hint of an undercutting of their "virtue" is the vivified coal scuttle, which grins maliciously. [Chapter 3, pp. 67-68]
Although the reader has no inkling as to Old Martin's true intentions, Volpone-like he has read the intentions of his grasping relatives correctly — and means to save young Martin from becoming one of them in spirit. The reader like Pecksniff is thoroughly deceived ar this point, believing that the patriarch's intention is to send the young man out into the world with only his baggage and the clothes on his back. But already Dickens must have formulated his plan to send Martin and Mark Tapley to the malarial-ridden shores of the vast Mississippi in the Land of Duplicity and Hypocrisy. The sanctimonious hypocrite casts his eyes Heavenward, as if in thanks for Providence's sending him this grand opportunity to curry favour with the wealthy patriarch and eliminate an obvious rival among the many heirs to the Chuzzlewit estate.
Dickens, Charles. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne). London: Chapman and Hall, 1844.
_____. The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872. Vol. II.
Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington & London: Indiana U. P., 1978.
Vann, J. Don. "Martin Chuzzlewit, twenty parts in nineteen monthly installments, January 1843 — July 1844." New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Pp. 66-67.
Modified 8 January 2019
Last updated 12 November 2024